Sleep is an important part of life; one cannot live or function properly without it. The healthy amount of sleep for an adult is 7 to 9 hours a night. Getting less than 7 hours of sleep can cause one to wake up feeling tired and irritated making every day activities hard to accomplish. The main reason for a sleepless night is sleep disturbances. They affect at least 40 million Americans a year and are becoming an epidemic. There are many disorders that can cause a troubled sleep; but, nightmares, night terrors, insomnia and hypersomnia are three of the most common.
One third of one’s life is spent sleeping. In the average lifetime, one would spend a total of around 6 years just dreaming! Everybody dreams even though one may not remember it. Although most common in children; nightmares affect adults as well. Probably the most common of sleep disorders, nightmares are something that almost everyone has experienced. Nightmares are vivid dreams that cause terror, anxiety and fear. Nightmares occur in the fourth stage of sleep, which is deep sleep. Nightmares are caused by rapid eye movement (REM). REM causes irregular EEG patterns that are like the patterns in stage one which is light sleep. Most people experience REM sleep three to five times a night. Nightmares can also be caused by stress, illness, a loss of a family member or a scary movie. After having a nightmare, it can be extremely difficult to fall back asleep. There are other feelings associated with dreams besides fear, feelings such as guilt, sadness, and confusion also occurs in nightmares. Most people who have nightmares do not remember what they have dreamed. There is no exact treatment for nightmares, but before bed time one should try to avoid late night sna...
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...put on the relaxing music and to count the sheep; 10...9...8...7...6... After all, who does not love a good night’s rest?
Works Cited
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/parasomnias http://www.nightmaresanddreams.com/facts.html http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/parasomnias http://www.healthcentral.com/sleep-disorders/cf/slideshows/6-facts-about-nightmares?ic=8833#slide=2 http://www.livescience.com/36454-strange-insomnia-facts-treatments.html http://www.womenshealth.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/insomnia.html http://www.brainfacts.org/diseases-disorders/diseases-a-to-z-from-ninds/hypersomnia/ http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200311/how-cure-nightmares http://www.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/night-terror/overview.html https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/inso/treatment.html Psychology a journey 5th edition
Each year at least 40 million Americans suffer from long term, persistent sleep disorders, and an additional 20 million experience occasional sleeping problems. About 60 million Americans a year have insomnia and it tends to increase with age and affects about 40 percent of women and 30 percent of men. It is estimated that 18 million Americas are suffering from sleep apnea, 12 million have RLS, and 250,000 are affected by narcolepsy. Adults typically need between 6 and 10 hours of sleep per 24 hour period, and most people need approximately 8 hours of sleep per day. Infants generally need about 16 hours per day; whereas, teenagers require 9 hours on average. In the first 3 months of...
Sleeping disorders are a very common thing that people face every day. A sleeping disorder is when a person is unable to sleep or unable to stay asleep when they have the chance to do so. There are many things that impact a person through out the day, causing sleeping disorders but the two most common are stress and medical problems. Stress is so common in adults and college students preventing them from being able to fall asleep and getting the right amount of sleep they need each night. Medical problems such as sleep apnea and night terrors also do the same thing and are not curable. This is not good because many people cannot perform a normal day without the right amount of sleep the night before.
The REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD) is characterized clinically by a history of changes in the nature of the patients' dreams
Sleep is one of our basic needs to survive and to function in day to day operations, but not everyone needs the same amount of sleep. Some people can survive on very little sleep, i.e. five hours a night, and some people need a lot of sleep, to the extend that they are sleeping up to 10 to sometimes 15 hours a night (Nature, 2005). According to Wilson (2005) the general rule states that most people need from seven to eight hours of sleep. The deprivation of sleep in our society in continually increasing with the demands in society increasing work loads, the myth that a few hours of sleep is only necessary to function properly and that sleep is sometimes considered as killing time (Nature, 2005). Sometimes sleep deprivation is also caused by other situations like sleep disorders, i.e. sleep apnea, chronic insomnia or medical conditions such as stress (Wilson, 2005).
The discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep suggested that sleep was not, as it was thought to be, a dormant state but rather a mentally dynamic one. Your brain is, in fact, very active in this state, almost to the level at which it is when a person is awake. Yet during this active stage in which most dreams occur, the movements of the rest of the body are completely stilled. To imagine this paralysis during dreams not occurring is a frightful image, since in many cases dreams are violent and active. When the neurotransmitters that control the movement of the body do not work properly the person develops REM sleep behavioral disorder (RBD).
“Insomnia is the inability to obtain adequate amount or quality of sleep. The difficulty can be with falling asleep, remaining asleep, or both” (“Insomnia Encyclopedia“). Sleeping is a major point in physically and mentally restoring yourself for the tasks ahead. Most people say that about eight hours of sleep is an adequate amount, however it differs from person to person depending on their sex, age, and health conditions. An estimated one-third of the population suffers from some form of insomnia. “In recent studies, a survey reported that 30% of American women and 20% of American men took medication to help them sleep during the course of a year” (“Insomnia”). The medications these people took are called hypnotics. The causes of insomnia vary for different situations.
The average adult needs at least 8 hours of sleep every night but some adults tend to get between five and six hours. When you lose one or two hours of sleep each night it can affect your health. "The single element that ties sleep disorders together is that they disrupt in one or more parts of out sleep cycle." (Zimbardo). Insomnia’s chronic inability to fall asleep quickly causes frequent arousals while sleeping or causes early morning awakenings. When you don’t get enough sleep it also causes depression and heart disease and in some cases adults tend to suffer from insomnia. If you change up your lifestyle it can help to cure insomnia and when you take the time out of your busy day to relax and unwind it can help you sleep better at night. Other causes of insomnia is exces...
Fisher, C.J., Byrne, A., Edwards, and Kahn, E. (1970) REM and NREM nightmares. In E. Hartman (ed), Sleep and Dreaming. Boston : Little Brown
Sleeping disorders negatively impact your everyday movements, you’re families and your health. The last couple of weeks I’ve research everything I can about sleeping disorders and how it’s impacted our daily lives. I’m from a mining community where everyone is impacted in a negative way, because of the schedule they have. In our home my kids are impacted the most by the rotating mining schedule. The mining schedule starts early in the morning by 1st get to the parking lot to get on the bus or van at 3am, start their 12 hour shift and get off, load up and drive home. My husband and his crew don’t get to Elko until 8pm and he drives out to spring creek, which is another 20 minute drive. He gets home at 8:30pm. He eats, showers, we talk and he goes to bed before 10pm. My husband leaves town for his whole rotation. The kid’s don’t see or talk to him for 5 days straight. Luckily, my kids have been used to this, because he’s been traveling for so long that it’s normal to us. Never easy, but we manage to make things work. A general rule of thumb that we need to get at least 8 hours of sleep to be healthy individuals and live a long life. Miners work is very hazardous, and to add on the lack of sleep these men and women don’t get. During my research I came across this
Many people suffer from bad dreams, often referred to as nightmares, every night. It is not uncommon to experience fright filled slumber from time to time, but some people are inclined to suffer more often than an occasional bad dream. While some mental health professionals believe nightmares reduce mental tensions by allowing the mind to act out its fears, new research suggests that bad dreams are more likely to increase anxiety in everyday life. In addition to life’s anxieties, what other factors contribute to nightmares and why?
Patricia Alpert and colleagues (2011), state that fifty to seventy million Americans have chronic sleep and wakefulness disorders. Those most affected are women and ethnically are non-Hispanic Blacks compared with all other ethnic adults. According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults need an average of seven to nine hours of sleep per night. However, as a general rule the length of sleep varies per individual.
Have you ever stayed up too late? At one time or another most people have probably experienced that feeling where their eyes start to droop and blur. It’s their body telling them they need to sleep… But do they? Many people might think losing a night’s sleep or not sleeping enough is not a big deal, but in fact, continuously lacking sleep does affect people in a bad way. People should know the healthy amount of sleep they need and some solutions to sleeping problems. Sleep deprivation causes physical and mental effects on the human body and can be directly responsible for many fatal accidents.
Usually when you end up drifting off to sleep, you fall into a deep sleep and begin to experience a so called dream.” However, most children, and even some adults, experience some even more terrifying so called dreams. These dreams are called nightmares. Nightmares have been occurring in people’s sleep for hundreds of years. People have been interested in them for centuries and they have quite an interesting past to them.
Lack of sleep negatively affects many different aspects of your life and making sure you get enough sleep will save you from: mood swings, loss of focus, change in behavior, and difficulties in everyday tasks.
Sleep is a very important factor in the human function. Our body and brain is able to reset itself and rejuvenate while we sleep. When we do not get the required amount of sleep, we start to feel lethargic and foggy minded, because our mind and body wasn’t able to replenish itself. Sleep is imperative that an insignificant rest deficiency or lack of sleep can affect our ability to remember things; decisions and can affect our temperament. Chronic sleep deficiency can get the body to feel agitated and it could lead to serious health problems such as, heart problems, stress, acne, and obesity.